Destiny by Gillian Shields

GILLIAN SHIELDS

Destiny

Destiny txt ed4.indd iiiDestiny txt ed4.indd iii 5/2/12 12:29 PM5/2/12 12:29 PM

Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Destiny

Copyright © 2012 by Gillian Shields

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of

this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without

written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in

critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins

Children’s Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd

Street, New York, NY 10022.

www.epicreads.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-06-200041-5 (trade bdg.)

Typography by Amy Ryan

12 13 14 15 16 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

❖

First Edition

Destiny txt ed4.indd ivDestiny txt ed4.indd iv 5/2/12 12:29 PM5/2/12 12:29 PM

1

Prologue

E verything is connected. The people you pass on

the street, the child looking up with trusting eyes,

the old woman bent down with memories, the beggar on

the corner. We weave in and out of one another’s lives, like

circles within circles, and everything is for a purpose.

We were meant to meet Helen. Her life connected

with ours, and together we did things that we could never

have even imagined alone. She was the best of us, and this

is her story.

It isn’t a story about magic; it’s about miracles. The

miracle of friendship, and courage and sisterhood. And

the miracle of love—the greatest power of all—that came

down and touched us as Helen embraced her destiny.

Crazy Helen Black, they said—but we know better. We

Destiny txt ed4.indd 1Destiny txt ed4.indd 1 5/2/12 12:29 PM5/2/12 12:29 PM

2

believe in everything she did, everything she was.

So when you next pass the girl who doesn’t fit in, at

school or in the mall or walking down the street with her

shoulders hunched and her eyes dark with loneliness,

just stop for a moment and ask yourself—what power is

she hiding deep within her soul? And ask yourself where

your own powers are leading you. To the light, or into

the shadows? We all have to make that choice sometime.

We have to make our destinies happen.

This is Helen’s story. Read it, and then make your own

choices. And may your destiny be as strange and beautiful

as her own.

In sisterhood,

Evelyn Johnson and Sarah Fitzalan


3

One

From the Diary of Helen Black

Wyldcliffe, September 13

I ’ve done something crazy and stupid and wicked, and you’re

the only person I can tell. My Wanderer, I need you so badly.

When I scribble my thoughts to you in this diary, it’s almost as

though you are here with me again, like you used to be, in the old

days.

I can’t even tell Evie and Sarah what I’ve done, because I know

it was wrong. But can you understand that I had to know what

would happen? I had to see if I could make things different. To

know whether freedom was possible for her—and for me.

The idea was tormenting me all summer, like a voice in my

head. “Go and try it when you get back to Wyldcliffe, just see if it

works, you won’t do any harm. . . .”


4

But who can tell what harm we do? They say that every action

affects someone else, like a tiny stone falling and starting an ava-

lanche. Everything is connected.

If what I have done hurts Evie or Sarah, I’ll never forgive

myself.

I went to the hills,

Where the wind blows

Over the high ground.

I looked for the prisoner

Who chains my heart.

I found a broken bird,

And a forgotten song.

I found myself.

The worst thing of all is that I know I will go and do it all

again tomorrow. I hope that my sisters will forgive me, but I have

to do this. And I have to do it alone.

I was crazy Helen Black, bent over my diary, snatch-

ing at words to ease my pain, pouring my heart out to a

lost dream. The only person I could talk to was my

Wanderer, and he wasn’t even really there, only in my

secret memories. I was alone, I always had been, always


5

would be, and that was that.

The people I should have turned to, Sarah and Evie,

were the ones I was most careful to hide the truth from.

All my life I had craved friendship, but now I had found

it, I hardly knew what to do with it. Ironic, isn’t it? I had

even found my family at last—my dad, Tony, and his new

wife, Rachel, and their two gorgeous kids. They were so

kind to me, but I didn’t feel I belonged with them. On my

visit to their home in the summer vacation, I had been

awkward and self-conscious, craving their acceptance but

not really knowing how to accept myself. I didn’t know

how to break out of the protective cage I had built around

my heart for years, so we never got to know one another

properly. Despite their kind words and good intentions

and my father’s promise to write to me often, I knew that

Tony and Rachel were secretly relieved when it was time

for me to go back to boarding school and they could get

on with their own life. And I was glad to leave, liberating

them of the burden of trying to be nice to me. But when I

arrived at Wyldcliffe on a blustery September day, things

started to get even tougher.

It’s not that my friends weren’t waiting for me. There

they were, running down the platform when I got off the

train at the little country station at the head of Wyldcliffe’s


6

windswept valley. They threw themselves at me with hugs

and smiles. My friends. They were so special, both of

them. Evie Johnson—sensitive, passionate, with long red

hair and sea-gray eyes. She had known love and loss and

she still grieved under that welcoming smile. Evie’s mystic

element was water, connecting her to the river of time and

the flow of the years. And Sarah—dear, dear Sarah, my

sister of earth; good and grounded and caring, a queen of

the green forests and wild mountains, with curling brown

hair and dancing brown eyes and a heart that was true and

steady as an oak tree. Ordinary girls, other people might

have thought, but I knew they were unique and wonderful

and powerful.

I told myself I wasn’t good enough for them. They

deserved a better fate than to be tied to my miserable

doom. I wanted them to be free of me, so I turned away

from them and scribbled my secrets to a long-lost ghost.

Another September, another school year, another

return to Wyldcliffe Abbey School for Young Ladies. But

there was someone else waiting for me at Wyldcliffe. She

was there, drawing me back to those dark hills. She was

waiting for me. Our battle wasn’t done yet. As I sat once

again in the gloomy classrooms and tried to concentrate

on French and history, my thoughts wandered up to the


7

moors, where a beloved enemy was waiting for me to make

the next move. What was she thinking? What was she

planning? And did she ever think of me?

I had to find out, and I had to make sure that Evie and

Sarah didn’t guess what I was about to do.

It was easy to sneak out of the school, now that I had

my powers back. Now that I could step through the air

again I could at least escape for a little while, and that’s

all I did at first. When it all got too much—the noise of

the school, the endless talk-talk-talk of the other students,

the black looks from the mistresses because I wasn’t pay-

ing attention in class—I took the secret paths through

the air and walked over the moors, reveling in the winds

and the clouds and the call of the birds. Even the sym-

pathy and concern of Evie and Sarah seemed too much

sometimes. Stifling. They didn’t mean to be like that, but

I could sense them watching me, the little glances between

them—Is Helen all right? Is she coping? What’s going on with

her? It made me feel like a prisoner.

If I sound ungrateful, I didn’t mean to be. And if my

friends watched me closely, it was only because they cared.

I was grateful, deep down. I loved Sarah and Evie. I would

have died for them. But I still felt cut off and different. I

still feel like that abandoned child in the orphanage.


8

That’s why I needed my Wanderer, even though he

had left me long ago. I told him my secrets in hot, hasty

words that spilled out like blood into my diary, instead of

actually talking with my friends. But that wasn’t enough.

More than anything, I needed my mother.

I tried to forget that she was Celia Hartle, the Priest-

ess, who hated the very sound of my name. I ached to have

what I had never known, and clung to any scrap of hope,

telling myself that it was a new term, a new day, and a new

beginning. And so I went to the moors alone, passing by

the secret ways. I know I shouldn’t have, but I was driven

to it by my restless, hungry heart. I went to the circle of

stones on the Blackdown Ridge, where my mother’s spirit

was trapped in the great, lonely rock.

And I spoke to her.


9

Two

THE WYLDFORD CHRONICLE

LOCAL NEWS ROUNDUP

SEPTEMBER 14: A new academic year is beginning this

September at Wyldcliffe Abbey School for Young Ladies.

The school has always been an important institution in the

local area, bringing not only prestige to this remote corner

of the country, but employment opportunities. Gardeners,

cleaners, cooks, and many others have made their living at

the exclusive girls’ boarding school. However, the Chronicle

has learned that all that might be about to change, as the

school, which is over a hundred years old, is now threat-

ened with possible closure.

The troubles began when the respected High Mistress,

Celia Hartle, who had led the school for many years, went


10

missing in mysterious circumstances. Her body was found

on the moors above the school’s Victorian Gothic mansion,

and an open verdict was returned by the coroner. Was it a

heart attack, suicide, or something more sinister?

The teacher who took the reins while Mrs. Hartle

was missing, Miss Pauline Raglan, then hurriedly left

the school due to “ family problems,” and the appointment

of a new High Mistress, Miss Miriam Scratton, was

similarly blighted. Miss Scratton was tragically killed in

an automobile accident last term, and her death has set

tongues wagging. It is only just over a year ago that one of

the Wyldcliffe students drowned in the lake on the school

grounds, and questions are now being asked as to whether

the three deaths are connected in any way.

There have always been rumors about Wyldcliffe’s his-

tory, and the place has been called “cursed,” but these sto-

ries have usually been dismissed as gossip and legend. For

instance, it is said locally that a former inhabitant of Wyld-

cliffe Abbey, Lady Agnes Templeton, was in fact murdered

and that her ghost walks at night. Indeed, some elderly

residents go so far as to say that Lady Agnes will one day

return to Wyldcliffe to save it from great danger. And now

less colorful, more disturbing stories are being circulated.

It is rumored that Wyldcliffe is the base for some kind


11

of pagan cult, whose existence has been hushed up over

the years. There has never been any proof of such claims,

but these persistent rumors, combined with the unfortunate

recent deaths, have caused enrollments at Wyldcliffe School

to plummet. Even its famously upper-crust traditions have

been falling out of favor as the twenty-first century pro-

gresses. “Girls nowadays want to get good grades to pre-

pare them for college, not learn how to hold a knife and

fork correctly. Wyldcliffe’s day is over,” said one disgruntled

former pupil, who didn’t want to be named.

It is known that Miss Scratton had wanted to intro-

duce a program of modernization, but whether this will

now take place and whether the school can survive without

it remains to be seen.


12

Three

From the Diary of Helen Black

September 14

I didn’t know whether I would survive approaching her. I was

shaking with fear, crouching at the foot of the tallest stone

on the Ridge, which loomed over me like a black tower. I tried to

breathe the fragrant air of the moors to calm myself as I leaned

against the rock and listened for my mother’s voice.

She sensed me. She welcomed me. She spoke to me from deep

inside her prison, and her voice echoed in my head. It was heavy

with sorrow, weighed down with regret for what she had done,

and how she had fought against us.

I know, Wanderer, I know! Don’t tell me! You think I am

fooling myself, dabbling in dangerous, self-indulgent games. Maybe

I am, but just listen! I told you that Celia Hartle hates the sound


13

of my name, but perhaps she has truly changed? What if the long

days and nights she has spent as a prisoner have really made her

see things differently? Maybe she even sees me differently now.

And besides, isn’t everyone capable of redemption? If we don’t

believe that, we are all lost in darkness forever.

Reaching out to my mother’s mind was extraordinary. We are

both creatures of air, and although she has turned her back on the

true meaning of the Mystic Way, she can still send her thoughts

to me on the wind’s breath. And she seemed so altered from how

she had been before, humble and quiet, not like the Celia Hartle I

remembered. She showed me tender images of when I was a baby,

during the few weeks before she took me to the children’s home.

She said she wished she could go back to do things differently. To

start again.

I know what you are thinking—can I trust anything that she

says? But do I even have to decide about that yet? Can’t I just enjoy

this secret time, before Evie and Sarah find out and tell me, “You

can’t do this, don’t be so stupid, don’t be so crazy”?

Now, after all these years, it seems that Celia Hartle might be

willing to be a mother to me at last. I want to believe that, Wan-

derer. Let me believe it, just for today. She wishes she could start

again. . . . I wish with all my heart that I could free her, body and

soul, and turn back time so that everything could be different for both

of us, clean and pure, like a new song, with no past, only a future.


14

Oh, I know that isn’t possible. She is hidden in her prison of

stone and earth, and I cannot follow her into that eternal tomb.

There is so much that divides us, and always will.

But I can still hope.


Destiny by Gillian Shields

Documents

Transcript of Destiny by Gillian Shields